I'll Die Like This, Too
by FarenMaddox
Summary: My response to the "end" of xxxHolic. There's a reason he looks so much like his great-grandfather, and he's not going to keep silent anymore. After a hundred years, it's time to take a risk. My interpretation of Chapter 213 and what should come after.
1. What I Am

_**A/N:** This is my way of coping with the ending of this series, and coping with the feeling that I've lost a dear friend. I feel almost silly for saying this because he is a fictional character, but I learned a lot from Doumeki Shizuka . . . I will miss him. I will miss this whole series greatly. Thankfully, writing this seemed to help._

* * *

What I Am

I was born on the day of my great-grandfather's funeral, I'm told.

People said that's why I was named for him. Nobody ever said that's why my grandmother didn't like me. In fact, my grandmother was a complicated woman and there were a multitude of reasons for her dislike, some of which I was still figuring out well into adulthood. But I was certain that being born that day was a large part of it. It doesn't help that I looked and acted eerily like him, or so my mother told me. I always suspected that she meant more by that than what the words implied. But that's getting ahead of the story.

There was an argument the day Dad took me to the shop for the first time. I was five. My grandmother was living with us, and that day, she was saying something that I didn't understand but that I knew was cruel. It made my mother angry, and that's when I began to realize just how important Watanuki was to my family. I called him Watanuki because that's what everybody else called him . . . That's getting ahead of things again.

My grandmother's distant dislike of me was nothing compared to the sheer loathing she had for him. I had already been told a few stories—there was a wizard who lived in a shop of magic that we were friends with. At this time, I simply thought of him as a story. But when I realized she was talking about this legendary figure with such disgust, I asked her why she hated him.

It took me years to figure out what she meant when she answered me. Her father, my ancestor Doumeki Shizuka, had taken her along on many of his visits to Watanuki's shop when she was young. She had never been able to understand why her father always came home late and why she had ever been introduced to the wizard. But the summer she turned fifteen, she "realized something" about the two men that made her "unable to look at her father the same way" afterward. She had "passed the responsibility" to my father as soon as he was old enough, and had never gone back.

I tried to ask what she meant, but she only said bitterly that the wizard had come between her father and her mother. That was when my mother told her to shut up. I was shocked. No one ever spoke so disrespectfully in my home, especially not to a venerable woman like my grandmother. My mother yelled that I was five years old and I didn't need to hear about such things. And that furthermore, my great-grandmother had been an amazing person who was capable of making her own decisions and didn't need an ungrateful daughter like my grandmother cheapening what she had made of her life.

I knew little about my great-grandmother at the time. I knew her name was Kohane and that she and my mother had been very close and it was their friendship that had made my mother and father get married. I was worried about the course of this argument. My father, a mild-mannered man who liked to keep people happy, managed to get in between his mother and his wife at this point, and they went off in opposite directions in a huff.

Left standing in the middle of the room, slightly shocked, I thought to ask,

"Dad? Why did Grandma have to visit that man if she didn't like him?"

My father took a while to answer. He'd made his own share of visits to the shop, but more often he allowed my mother to be the one to go. They had never told me why they went so often—once or twice a week.

"He has a magic spell on him," my father explained carefully, "that keeps him stuck inside his magic shop. He can't leave it at all. So your mother and I have to visit to bring him groceries and see if he needs anything."

Something about this scenario struck me very strongly. I was an only child, and my parents were the youngest members of my family. Even at five, I understood loneliness.

"Dad?" I whispered it, because I was so overwhelmed. "Does that wizard have other friends to visit him?"

"He has clients who need his magic," my father shrugged.

I didn't make any kind of clear decision. I didn't think about it at all, I couldn't have. I was five. The words just tumbled out of my mouth.

"I want to go there now."

"Right now?" my father asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes."

"Why, Shizuka?"

"I don't know," I said, too stubborn to cry. "I just want to."

It makes perfect sense that I couldn't explain what I was thinking. Because the thoughts were well beyond my years and my ability to articulate . . . Ah, but one thing at a time.

I would hear of nothing else. I would go to that shop and I would meet the wizard. I was unable to define my need to be in his presence, but my young self did at least feel excitement, as well. I'd heard folktales before. But I was going to meet a man around whom such tales came to life. My grandmother followed me and my father to the door, berating him for taking me, but we went anyway.

My father opened the gate and let us inside, and my eyes saw nothing of the shop itself or the yard around it. They were drawn immediately to the porch.

My first sight of Watanuki was a sight oft repeated: a robed figure reclining with a plume of smoke curling around his tilted-back head. I dragged my father over.

"Yoshi," the man said in a lazy way. "I wasn't expecting you."

He shrugged. "My son wished to come."

"Ah," the man said, looking down at me and smiling a half-smile. "Did you ever tell me his name?"

"I didn't," my father said, sounding nervous.

He had known my great-grandfather, hadn't he? "I'm named Doumeki Shizuka."

"Are you?" he said, and the half-smile became a strange and twisted smirk directed at my father.

My father shrugged again, and conveyed the fact that I had been born on the day of great-grandfather's funeral. "It was Kimiko's idea," he finished. My mother.

Something laughed in his eyes, even though my father's nervousness seemed to indicate that he should be angry. "I take it she and your mother still don't get along?"

My father's eyes flickered to me. This was yet another thing that took me a long time to understand.

"She was such a bright little girl," the man muttered, pulling a drag of his pipe. "I still have no idea what I did to make her hate me, but it's truly unforgivable if she takes it out on a child."

He turned to me then. "Do you know what my name is?" the wizard asked me.

I was a little in awe of him at this point, and so I couldn't answer.

"It's Watanuki Kimihiro," he said, and his smile to me was warm. He always had a soft spot for children.

"Do you really do magic?" I asked him, feeling better now that he was smiling at me.

"When the need arises," he drawled, and puffed a curl of smoke into the sky. "Is that why you wanted to visit me today? To ask me about magic?"

I shook my head, and I plopped myself down beside him on the porch. "Dad says you can't leave your shop."

"That's true," he said calmly.

"I thought you would be lonely. So I came."

Even I knew it was strange that I was so matter-of-fact about this. But then, I was that way about everything, even as such a young boy. I drew up my legs, planted my elbows on them, and rested my face in my hands, prepared to spend the rest of the day sitting here.

Watanuki looked genuinely startled, and the look he gave my father actually seemed almost frightened. I heard him tell my mother later that he'd never seen the wizard "lose his composure like that," and I filed it away in my brain as yet another thing to understand when I was older.

"It's too bad Mokona isn't here anymore," he muttered. "He'd have known how to entertain a child."

"I remember my mother telling me you had some kind of magical creature that lived here," my father said. "It's gone?"

"The two Mokonas missed each other a great deal. I sent Larg away to be with Soel."

"Where are they now?"

"Still traveling. They say it's only been ten years for them. And last time, they were able to stay in Clow Country for a long time. Things are changing . . ." He stopped talking of his own accord, and smiled at me again. "You must be bored. Would you like to see my house?" he offered politely.

"In a while," I said, trying to relax beside him and look as cool as he did. I lacked the ability to smoke a pipe in such a graceful way—even lacked a pipe—and I was five, so the attempt did not work particularly well.

"You live in a temple, don't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed, turning my face his direction. "I have to sweep the yard every day, but I don't mind because I like being outside . . ."

* * *

I was ten when my purifying abilities revealed themselves.

I had long since made the habit of going to the shop after school and staying for an hour or two. Watanuki behaved like an indulgent uncle, making me an after-school snack, asking me about my day, telling me folk tales and explaining all of his customers' problems and their magical solutions. We would sit on the porch together until my mother arrived to take me home, usually carrying groceries or something that Watanuki had requested. If he was distracted by a customer, he would send me off to play in the yard with the two creatures Maru and Moro. They were certainly entertaining, but they bothered me in a way I couldn't define.

I felt no qualms about wandering all over the shop without asking permission. There was a spare room, with a bed that was made up as if waiting for someone to sleep in it. I always wanted to ask who it was for, but something held my tongue. It seemed like a stupid question. I knew the room couldn't possibly be mine, but I would catch myself thinking it should be. It made no sense, so I never spoke of it.

One day, a woman came in complaining that she was plagued by a spirit. Watanuki agreed with her and immediately began talking about how to dispel the spirit. Intrigued, I wandered close, thinking I would be able to see it. I couldn't see a thing. But when I started to turn away, the woman reached out to put her hand on my head, declaring that I was an adorable child.

Both the woman and Watanuki became wide-eyed and stared at me.

"What?"

"It's gone."

"What is?"

"The spirit, the spirit disappeared just now, when I touched him."

It made Watanuki smile, even though the woman was frightened and I was confused. "I thought it was just your looks," he said to me, which didn't clear up anything.

He said later, after the woman was gone, that I had inherited my great-grandfather's abilities to dispel bad spirits, as well as his looks and his attitude. When my mother arrived to pick me up, Watanuki asked her if we had any of great-grandfather's things. My mother mentioned a box, and Watanuki told her she must give it to me.

There were a few boring things in there, but there were two things I was drawn to. A wooden ring, and an egg. The egg I was suspicious of, and sniffed at, but it didn't smell like it had gone bad, no matter how long it had been in the box. I didn't understand what it was doing there, but even less did I understand why I slipped it into my pocket and told no one that I had it. I took the ring with me the next day, though, and asked Watanuki if he knew what it was.

He told me it had been a birthday gift, and that I was certainly meant to have it. He said he hoped I had an interest in archery. I had never had one in the past, but once the thought was planted in my brain, it refused to be uprooted. I would not rest until my parents had found a class I could take. I think my father was the only one who was surprised at how quickly I took to it.

* * *

It was on my seventeenth birthday that I began to understand my grandmother's hatred.

She was already dead by this point, and I never got a chance to hear her explanation. But it made it easier for me to honour her memory when I realized that the reason she felt that way was because of how much she had loved her father. Her loyalty to him had caused her to despise Watanuki, and I finally began to see why this was so. It also started me on the path to understanding her bitter disappointment in my birth, my name, and the fact that I was good at soccer and Japanese archery.

I brought a piece of my birthday cake to the shop. Watanuki seemed surprised to see me and asked why on earth I was wasting my birthday with him. I don't think I actually answered him. I just gave him the cake. I didn't want to eat it because by now I had trouble eating my mother's cooking. I was becoming far too used to Watanuki's snacks, since I still came nearly every day and studied while he cooked for me. I supposed a hundred years of practice had given him the edge on my mother, as far as cooking skills went.

I never mentioned that sometimes, I felt like I remembered his cooking. Even when he made me something I'd never tried before. It was familiar, the way the shop was familiar. At least as familiar to me as my own home at the temple, which was guarded by wards he'd made for us.

"I don't remember. How old are you, Shizuka-kun?"

"Seventeen."

He lifted his eyebrows, and put on that smirk that I had come to hate by this point. Something in that smirk was false and lying and I had no idea why it angered me that he might lie to me. Why should an immortal, powerful wizard be required to answer honestly to a teenaged brat who constantly pestered him without invitation?

"We're the same age, now," he said.

It had not escaped me that he seemed awfully youthful. I had always assumed it had something to do with being a wizard. But to hear him apply an age to himself made me wonder. Obviously, there was something large and complicated behind his existence and my own family's role in it. But this was truly the first time I had seriously contemplated it. I felt a need to know, and at the same time a desperate desire not to.

"So you've lived here since you were seventeen?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Why?"

I had never asked this question before. And I immediately wished I hadn't. Because that was a frustrating, nagging feeling that I already knew the answer. And another, equally annoying feeling that it was out of my character to ask such a thing.

"I'm waiting for someone," he said quietly. He didn't explain anything more, not that night, even though he did tell me later. That night, he simply lounged back on the porch and smoked. There was something disturbing about it, this time. His behaviour toward me changed that night. Up till this point, anything odd he did could be chalked up to his wizardly eccentricities. But there was no reason for the strange way he eyed me that night, the way his posture shifted into something different.

It was when I got home that night that I finally realized how seductive it had seemed. That was so far from the way he'd behaved toward me before that I had a hard time figuring out that's what it was. But I wasn't as disturbed as I should have been. Not disturbed at all, to be honest. It just seemed amusing. Or it did until I began figuring out why my grandmother thought he'd come between her parents.

Things were beginning to make more sense than I really was ready for them to. I knew by now that my great-grandfather had come to the shop every day, for years, all throughout my grandmother's childhood. Whatever had set off her hatred when she was fifteen, it was the reason he had stopped going. But something inside me told me that it was Watanuki's decision. He had told great-grandfather not to return. I don't know what she saw. It might have been something as simple as Watanuki's tendency to bare his leg and lower his eyelids, which he began to do to me. But maybe what she saw was the weariness her father began to feel about his double life. Maybe once Watanuki saw it, he did the selfless thing and allowed the man to go live out his life with his family while he subjected himself to the less-than-tender ministrations of my grandmother. I heard that she made my father start doing Watanuki's grocery shopping when he was only thirteen, and she never returned.

My great-grandfather must have been so torn . . . And Watanuki had been alone until an argument when I was five years old had led me to him.

I never really cried as a child. But I cried myself to sleep on my seventeenth birthday.

* * *

I was twenty when I truly realized that my life was not entirely my own.

I chose a school that was a four-hour drive from the city, so for two years, I only returned on holidays. I knew my mother had resumed going to the shop, still driven by whatever she'd learned from my great-grandmother so many years ago. But every time I returned, he'd become a little more distant and a little less happy to see me.

He was preparing himself for the day I stopped coming back.

But somehow, my business major turned into an intense pursuit of a degree in folklore and history. I'd never had much use for my gift, but even the knowledge that I could repel evil spirits provided me with a link to a world that was hidden to most people. I began to believe I would only be squandering that if I ignored it and chased after a normal life.

I returned to the city and finished out my studies there. I took up a post as an associate professor. I had known that my great-grandfather had been a teacher, but I didn't know until I took the job and talked to the head of the department that I was actually following directly in his footsteps. Or perhaps I had known that without being told. There could only be one reason that this path felt so familiar and so right for me. A reason I had not yet fully come to terms with.

Several more years passed before I finally accepted who I was. A professor of folklore, living close enough to resume visiting the shop on a daily basis. Hearing at last the truth behind the mysterious existence of the wizard they called Watanuki. I started to sleep in that bed if I stayed there too late talking and drinking, and that was when he stopped guarding his words and I learned just what had occurred when he and my great-grandfather had been teenagers. I learned the truth about the woman he waited for. I learned what the Mokonas were, as well, and where they were. I learned everything, except the entire story gave me that vague feeling of having heard it before and so maybe it wasn't learning. Maybe it was nothing but a reminder. I'm not sure if he knew that by then.

* * *

I am twenty-nine now.

He's been telling me for weeks about the butterfly in his dream. I have a great deal of faith in his magical ability. The longer he's gone without being able to catch this butterfly, the more uneasy I've become.

He just told me he caught it.

* * *

He is requesting whiskey. Sounds great to me.

But as soon as I am far enough away, I pull out the egg, and feel a burning desire to use it. I have taken to carrying it with me, almost as though it were a talisman. It is my link to my past, a past I have never experienced and yet see when I close my eyes. He never even know about the egg, so there is only one way that I could know its purpose. The knowledge seems like it has always been with me. I don't remember any epiphany about it.

I want to use it. But I put it away, instead. I have more thinking to do. I cast a look back over my shoulder and see him there, and he looks younger than I do these days. He looks the same as the day I met him. Reclining on the porch with the pipe she gave him, surrounded by smoke, somehow looking elegant. Frozen. A sculpture in ice that will never change . . . Maybe it just can't change, anymore.

I never thought I would break the taboo. But I am doing it right now, and I can't stop myself.

I turn back to him and stand there looking down on him, and he's looking up at me, and he seems frightened of me.

"What is it, Doumeki?"

"You used to call me Shizuka."

"You were a child, then."

That isn't the reason he changed my name. He's a hundred years old, he can call me anything he likes. This one just comes to him more easily when he looks at me.

"Didn't you ever regret it at all?" It's like I'm five years old again. I have to whisper the question.

His face breaks, and he is turning away from me to hide what I have done.

"Of course I did," he mutters.

It was very quiet. I could pretend I didn't hear it. But it's been a hundred years, and he is tired. He speaks to me more openly than he ever did to my great-grandfather, but it's only because he knows viscerally what neither of us has acknowledged yet. Knows what I am. A second chance.

"You're only just now saying so?"

He can't look at me. "I learned to regret it far too late for it to matter. He had two children when I finally saw it."

"So you sent him away."

"He had a family. His daughter . . . It was the excuse I needed."

"And now?"

"What about now?"

"Now you'll keep waiting for her even though he and his daughter have died and there's no reason."

He finally turns back to me, and I am shocked to see tears in his eyes, glittering on the glass in his spectacles.

"I'm old, Doumeki," he says simply, and turns away again.

He hasn't left this shop in over a hundred years. The world has changed in countless ways, and he wouldn't even know that it had happened if I hadn't been here to tell him. Waiting here for her is the only left to him, the only thing that makes sense, the only thing that hasn't changed . . . Except, that isn't true. There's one other thing. One thing that has never and will never change.

"You're afraid."

I made him flinch. "Yes."

"Why?"

It was that question I had decided to never ask. The answer would inevitably hurt, I'd always known that . . . No, it wasn't me that had known that, not at first.

"What is there for me?" he asks softly. "Learning to navigate a foreign land may interest Syaoran, but he has companions. I'm not truly him, and I'm certainly not interested in doing it alone."

"Alone?"

He finally steals a glance at me. "You're a great kid, Shizuka, but—"

"Don't call me that."

He keeps looking off at the sky. His face is too shattered to put back together, now, so he just won't look at me.

"You're not him."

"I am."

"Prove it."

"I know your name."

"I never told . . . Syaoran did, didn't he?"

"Come with me." I didn't mean to say that. There's a part of me that's only a memory that never would say it, and a part of me that's just me that can see past all of that to know how desperately it needs to be said. I am taking his hand and bringing him to his feet, and he is suddenly clumsy with shock. I grab his shoulders, and his face is heartbreakingly beautiful, isn't it? How have I looked at him for twenty-four years without seeing that? "You can leave now, and I'll be with you. You know I will. I always was. I always will be."

"Where would we even go?"

"First, to find your other self. Let's find Syaoran and tell him that he can go home. It's only been fifteen years for him. He can still go home to her."

"All the time wasted . . ."

"It doesn't matter." I lean forward, until I feel my nose and my lips brushing against the skin of his neck and making him shudder. I put my mouth so close to his ear that I could nibble on that perfect earlobe, but instead I whisper to him. "Come with me, Tsubasa."

His knees give out, but I won't let him fall.

"Shizuka . . ." My name is not the same when he says it that way.

"Come with me."

"Yes. Yes, this time I will."

We know that when we latch the gate, the store will disappear, and I know that seeing it happen would tear him apart. So I just throw the useless egg back into the yard over my shoulder, and I make sure that we don't look back.


	2. Myself and Myself

**_A/N:_**_ It seems I wasn't quite ready to let this go yet . . . This will end up being in 3 parts, it looks like. Hopefully no one objects to a little more Shizuka II, because I can't get him out of my mind.  
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* * *

_

Myself and Myself

I've never known him to be so uncertain. At least, the me that is completely me and only twenty-nine years old has never seen it, although the protective feeling sweeping over me is entirely familiar. He is clinging to me as we walk down the path, away from the shop, with his eyes constantly darting back and forth to look at our surroundings. My arm is held in a bruising grip, but I can feel the fine tremble that is building up behind it, and I think I'd better move us to someplace safe as quickly as I can.

"It's so different."

He is whispering it, walking close at my shoulder and clutching me hard enough to hurt. I won't say anything about the pain. I never do— No, he never did— The lines between me and Doumeki Shizuka are blurring so quickly now that I feel like I'm falling and I wonder how it is I am still walking in a straight line.

"I don't recognize any of this. It's . . . where are we going?"

I briefly lay my hand over his, but only just for a moment. Any longer, and he will remember himself and pull away to suffer through his fear alone.

"I thought we'd start with something easy," I say with patient humour, something I've had since before I was old enough to have such a thing. I suppose that the lines between us have never been clear, and I see now that my mother knew it was something like this all along. I wonder what my great-grandmother knew, what she told my mother. "We're going to the temple. It's hardly changed at all, even after this long."

That relaxes him a bit. His hand is still holding me, but I no longer fear a loss of circulation. A pair of giggling girls run past us, chased by a father far more lively than mine ever was. Then again, my father never needed to chase me because I wasn't the running and giggling type.

He stops in the middle of the path and lets go of me. I see every muscle in his slender body straining to _not_ turn, to _not_ look back and see the hole in the universe that those two devilish remnants of Yuuko must have been lost in. Maru and Moro may not have had souls of their own, but they stayed at his side when the Doumeki family grew careless and lost interest.

But he has me, and he has his own determination. Now that he has made his choice, he doesn't want to look behind him. He starts walking again.

"Those girls were wearing such an old style of clothing . . . I was expecting jumpsuits and jetpacks."

It doesn't bother me that he doesn't want to talk about what he was thinking. I already know, and he knows I know, so that's good enough. Besides, now that he is outside of the shop he needs to know more about this new Japan that he is stepping into.

"Things really moved backward because of the war."

This less personal subject seems to have given him more confidence. The buildings may have changed, but his feet still know the path from his door to mine.

"After they closed the borders, after Nagasaki, the nationalistic spirit moved in the direction of our history. Everyone wanted a simpler, more traditional lifestyle, and lots of people left the city for rural areas—you know all this," I say suddenly, not sure why I'm explaining it to him. Of the two of us, he was the one who was alive during the war. "I heard a bunch of people from Nagasaki came to you for help in locating their loved ones."

He nods acknowledgement. His face has drifted far from me, back to that time. My grandparents were in college when the war began, so it was after he'd isolated himself completely from me—that is, from _him_—and begun to rely on my grandmother. I wonder how badly she neglected him during that time. I wonder how he survived when the whole country was living on food rations. I wonder how badly he hurt himself, asking for too little in return for his services because he couldn't bear to take more from the refugees.

That last thought makes the part of me that is more than myself feel desperation. He always disregarded himself in such cases, and I was supposed to be there to save him and I wasn't . . . I shouldn't be thinking like that. I am not quite the same man. This is not quite the same world, in fact. I have been told that the world of my grandparents' childhood was far different from my own. He himself has told me stories of his youth, no doubt thinking they were horribly antiquated and probably never realizing that they always sounded like science fiction to me.

"Yes," he says at last. "I knew the world was changing, but I . . . never thought I'd need to know the details."

Never thought he'd leave the shop. He had waited for Yuuko's return long past the point that he actually believed in it, just because he didn't know what else to do. This is the reason I was born when I was, and this is the reason that my thoughts and my feelings have always been older than I am, and this is the reason that I have been drawn to his presence since I was a child. Because I hold the answer to his uncertainty. I am Doumeki Shizuka, and I am also me. One hundred years ago, I left things as they were because I wouldn't hurt him and myself. But now, I don't have to fear that anymore. All I had to do was step forward and touch him to make him follow me.

I want his hand back on my arm. I want him to know I am here, and real. But he remembers the way to the temple well enough that he is walking ahead of me.

"We still have plenty of things you'd remember," I tell him, thinking that keeping the conversation casual is better for now. "The school system is similar, that sort of thing. Although, as I said, we honour tradition more today than you probably even did back then. When I joined the soccer team, it was so ritualistic I thought I might as well have become a priest."

I thought his feminine way of laughing was an affectation he used because it fit his image as an eccentric old wizard. It seems that's just how he laughs—a smoky chuckle that should sound familiar because I grew up hearing it, but instead makes me think he could ignite my blood with it if he chose to.

The temple comes into view, and he abruptly slows down. He clearly feels embarrassed about being so obvious, because he juts out his chin and keeps walking without looking at me. It's one of those things about him that will never change, and I'm glad to see his old self. It doesn't stop me from quickening my pace to catch him. When we enter the yard and go up the steps, I slip my arm around him.

I am sometimes just me. The old Shizuka might not have done such a thing, but the situation was different between us back then. This time, I want to touch him. This time, he will allow it. I feel over a hundred years of confusion and frustration being laid to rest in my soul because he is leaning into my touch instead of turning around and giving me hell for it.

I release a small chuckle as we remove our shoes.

"What?"

"I've never seen you wear shoes before. Didn't last long."

He pauses for a moment, then looks up with bravery.

"You'll see it again."

I didn't know it was possible to feel such a sweet sort of warmth as this. I want to kiss him, but it would be a poor choice of moment. And perhaps he won't accept it.

I am the sixth generation of my family to live here. I am the only one in three generations to have any sort of connection to the spirit realm or to serve the temple in any capacity other than hard labour. But we have lived here, protected by his wards and close enough to go to him if he needed help. My great-grandfather's will in this matter touched all of his descendents, it seemed, not just me. Enough that even his daughter, who hated the wizard, stayed in the city during those years of upheaval.

I knew we'd run into my mother and father soon enough. They turn a corner and see us, and we all stumble to a halt. I wait for them to be the first to speak, and I make my arm tighter around him. I don't want him thinking it's beneath his dignity to be seen like this and to go from my side again. Who knows how many years it would take to return this time?

"You— You— You're here." This is the most that my father can come up with.

"It's wonderful to see you," my mother says with more composure.

"And you, Kimiko."

I have never known him to be so reserved . . . Well, I have, but that was in the distant past. He became someone else during the passage of time, and now I see him already changing back. It's easy enough to understand. Not only was he a teenager the last time he was here, it was with someone who looked just like me. His old manner has been stirred to the surface, not as hidden beneath his Yuuko act as he would have liked.

"I thought you could never leave your shop?" my father asks weakly.

"I have become more powerful than the restraints that held me there," he says, retaining at least some of that ethereal, smirking manner.

"I see. When did this happen?"

"Tonight."

"You came straight here?"

"It was Shizuka's idea."

Their eyes are on me, and I wonder what I ought to say at this point. Surely they have realized by now that I am far more than simply their son? If nothing else, I am holding him against my side like he is my possession. I was fated to remain near him from our first meeting, and I've oriented myself around him since my seventeenth birthday. I think my mother, at least, has seen this coming all along.

"He'll stay with me," I tell them simply.

My father was ill-prepared for this moment. He didn't want to be prepared. He'd have been much happier if he'd been allowed to be an average person with no knowledge of the spiritual realm. His method of dropping off groceries, asking no questions, and never learning has left him unable to process this. I have brought home a one hundred and twenty-year-old man and announced we'll be sharing a room.

Or I think we will, in any case. It's not exactly something we've talked about, although I feel some confidence based on the fact that simply whispering in his ear makes his knees weak. And he isn't removing himself from my side. Or is he truly so frightened and overwhelmed that he can't?

"We were just on our way to bed," my mother says calmly. "Shall we talk in the morning?"

He bows slightly. "I look forward to it."

I never knew he possessed a smile in his arsenal that could be described as "sweet" or "innocent"—but that's not true, I did know. From before. This is becoming too much. I don't know how to reconcile myself with myself, but I'll have to if I don't want to go mad. I'm _not_ my great-grandfather, in all the small ways that infinitely matter right now.

"Goodnight," we all say to one another, and then I take him to my room. I don't know what to do after that. It's not that I'm inexperienced—rather the opposite—but it's _him_ and my twenty-nine-year-old self is still in some ways awestruck by him. And I don't know what he wants, either. After all this time, I've started thinking of those flashes of leg and seductive smiles as nothing more than part of his Yuuko act and meaningless when directed my way.

He doesn't really know what to do, either. He is flustered, in a way I've never seen but at the same time never fail to find amusing.

"So you'll call me Shizuka, then?" I ask him casually, walking past him to set up the bed. If nothing else, he must be tired. After weeks of making sleep into magical labour, after this emotionally draining day, he needs the rest.

"I . . . yes," he says simply, and that's fine with me.

"I've always called you Watanuki. Do you want me to keep calling you that?"

"No."

"Kimihiro?"

"No."

"Your real name?"

"I don't know," he says desperately. "You're him, you're not him, the shop is gone and I have no idea what I—I have to think, dammit!"

"I would like to call you that," I tell him quietly, returning to his side and leading him to the bed.

"Why?"

I guide us both to sit down, and I feel myself beginning to feel sort of queasy. Nervous. It's _him_. Here, with me.

"I need something between us that wasn't his first," I murmur, and I slowly slide my hand over his.

"You don't think this is enough?" he asks in disbelief, looking down at our hands. "I never— not with him— did he _want—_?"

Now my queasiness is more than nervousness, it's a feeling like I've been punched in the stomach. It had not occurred to me, at least not consciously. Maybe it's because I don't actually possess the memories of the first Shizuka and so had no way of knowing the truth. He has never had a romantic relationship before. All those years . . . Tied by fate, by circumstance, by _everything,_ to a married man that he sent away. I think it would kill him to find out that the person he wanted had wanted him in return, and he'd just missed it somehow. Thankfully, I can tell him the truth.

"I don't think he did," I say calmly. "I think it's just me this time. But I don't think he would be upset that his soul wound up in somebody like me."

"I didn't know _you_ wanted this."

There are things I've never been able to talk about in my life, and suddenly they are right there in front of me and they won't be held back. I tell him all the things I never though I'd say, things that I have shoved so far into the back of my mind that I'd lost the awareness of them.

"You have been the most important person in my life since the day I met you. I can't tell you how strange it was that I was already devoted to you when I was five. It was . . . It's completely your fault that I'm gay," I tell him rather bitterly. "Or his fault, or something. I went through puberty with the knowledge in my head that I was born to be at your side, and I imagine that influenced my development somewhat. And then when I turned seventeen you started doing all kinds of flirtatious things and I could hardly change it by then."

I had thought of him as being a rather selfish person until I grew up and learned more about what shaped him. Then I began to see just how great a heart he really has. And despite his discomfort right now, despite his uncertainty, he moves to hold my hand between his, and his eyes on me are filled with compassion.

"That can't have been easy. Even my existence must have been confusing . . . I didn't even realize what was happening, and you were a _child. _I'm sorry."

I don't know that I am crying until he takes his hand off mine to gently wipe my cheek. Confusing doesn't even begin to describe my passage into adulthood.

"Who was I supposed to talk to about something like that? Who was I supposed to go to, to confess that my first wet dream was about my after school babysitter? Who in their right mind would have understood that I couldn't be taken away from you, even if it seemed so unhealthy?"

When did we move into this position? I didn't even notice he had drawn me against him and pulled my head down to his shoulder. His hands are stroking my hair and my back, and I feel like it's finally time to let go of all this—all this confusion and anger, and enough shame to fill an ocean.

"Do you know what I did to myself in college, trying to escape that, to convince myself that it wasn't me who was feeling it? Do you know about the people that I begged to hurt me and abuse me to try to chase you out of me?" I am sobbing now, something I have never done before, definitely never done in over a hundred years. "It didn't work. It didn't work, so I came home, but I never thought anything would change. I never thought you would come with me. I—I—"

"Shizuka."

His voice, right in my ear, makes me shudder and that only makes me sob all the more. He sounds desperate to help me, but he doesn't know how. But he is here, and holding me instead of running from me. That is enough for me. Eventually, I run out of tears. Eventually, I run out of shame to let go of. Eventually, I can lift my head.

It's dark. I don't know how long I clung to him, but he never moved. Doesn't that mean that he wants to be here with me?

"We're both tired," I find myself saying. "Let's sleep."

"We're still dressed," he murmurs.

He does want this. My heart is already beginning to beat faster. He stands up and slips out of his clothes in one motion. The sliver of moonlight through the high window that falls over his bared shoulder and leg . . . I can barely breathe. I am on my feet, too, but struck dumb by this moment and motionless. He has always been so very, very unattainable, a lofty figure of awesome power whom I would spend my life pining after and not touching. Now he is before me, and the moonlight is sliding over his skin as he approaches me.

"You can't sleep in this," he says, and touches my sleeve. I am still in shock.

His hands find the edges of my clothes, pull them apart, and I can feel them trembling. He doesn't know what to do, and he's so beautiful. My arms will move, at least. I lift them to take off his glasses. His gasp is a silken touch of air on my fingers. I cup his cheek with my hand, and he closes his eyes and I see his tears in the moonlight. One hundred and twenty years and he has never felt an intimate touch in all that time. He is starving. He must have thought he could no longer even feel hunger, then this simple gesture moved him to tears.

He must be terrified.

I find his hands, bring them back to my clothes, guide him into undressing me. It's true that my own experiences were more or less about punishing myself, but it still leaves me as the person in this room with any real idea of what happens next. I want to begin slowly, just standing in this bit of moonlight. Discovering. I start with gestures that are more intimate than sensual. Touching his face and letting him lean into it. Kissing his eyes to rid them of tears. My hands are mostly on his waist, their movement restricted to stroking his slender ribcage.

He is more bold. His hands are exploratory. Finding all the things about this body that he never knew. It's not the same body, certainly, as similar as it seems. He knows that, and I do not begrudge the wistfulness I can feel in him over the fact. I have come back to him, slightly different but mostly the same, and he is willing to take me as I am. Both parts of me are almost pathetically grateful for this acceptance, and for some time I simply stand still with my head on his shoulder again, allowing him to comfort me as he explores me. He changes methods after a while, using his lips to continue what his hands started.

They are everywhere, his mouth and his hands. On my neck, on my thigh, on my shoulder, on the small of my back, on my chest. My own hands refuse to obey the order to go slowly. One strokes his hip, the other tangles in his hair and drags his face up so I can start kissing him in earnest. He moves into it, pressing his body completely against me. He is willing. He wants me to lead him.

"Love me, Tsubasa," I command him as I guide us downward.

"Always did like to boss me around," he murmurs into my neck as I lower him down.

Then it's us, and we're coming together, and it's good and right—but it's more than that. When two bodies come together, sometimes they speak. And tonight, what is spoken is potent and saturated into every moment. The word is "surrender."

His sweat paints it onto my chest when he thrusts his body upward. His tongue tastes of it when he opens his mouth to mine. His fingers scribe it onto the skin of my back when he helplessly seeks an anchor in the darkness. It's whispered in every tremble of desire.

There is such finality to it, as though it will never need to be spoken again after this. We will age and die together this time, and in another hundred years when we meet again, he will have already spoken it for that lifetime. I know I must answer it, and I do. Every thrust of my hips is "yes," and my fingers leave the marks of an equal surrender on the shoulders I am clutching to find my own anchor. My every kiss is a plea to love me, and his every shudder is a promise that he does.

At the end, I lay my head on his chest and find another sob swelling out of me. His hands tighten on me, accepting it and soothing it away.

"Sleep, Shizuka."

We still need to decide on the unimportant things like where we are going and what we will do with our life. But morning is soon enough for that. And he will be here when I wake up.


	3. I Will Be

**_A/N:_**_ I don't think I'm EVER going to really get over the ending of xxxHOLiC, and I will never stop believing that wasn't meant to be the end, even if we never see anything else from CLAMP about it. __I will always imagine a better fate for my beloved TRC/Holic characters than they received. __But I do think that writing this story helped to fill in the gaping hole that was left behind after reading Chapter 213. I'm officially ending it here, even though I find I enjoy writing from the perspective of Shizuka. I ended this with a lot of hope, and I don't want to screw it up by writing any more in this plotline. So, all this to say, I hope this story helped you as much as it helped me. If any of you have the courage to start reading Gate 7 . . . let me know how it goes._

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* * *

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I Will Be

I've never been one to talk much after sex. But I suppose that's when happens when you continually seek out for sex the sort of people you wouldn't otherwise talk to. I normally don't even _stay_ after sex. Tonight, with my cheek stuck to his skin and my ear hearing the thumping of his heart, I find myself speaking. His hands are moving through my hair, lifting the sweat-soaked tips away from my neck.

"I always did love your hands," I murmur, drowsy. "Even when I was a kid."

The hands in question pause. "Do you think," he says, sounding extraordinary with my ear on my chest and with his voice accompanied by a fine quiver of amusement, "that we could _never_ talk about you being a kid? At least not when we're in bed?"

That's what he says. What I hear is _"I want to stay with you."_

I chuckle softly, turning and moving upward and seeking to reverse our positions. He's smaller than me, so I'll be the one to hold him through the night. I don't want to let go of him, even when I fall asleep.

"Fine," is my reply, which is also _"That's what I want, too."_

I think we could be good at this double-speak.

"So . . . You like my hands?" he says, breathing against my throat and briefly making me think I might be able to go a third round. I'm exhausted from two, but I don't think I'll ever stop wanting this, not in this lifetime.

"Yes, but I was thinking that they might not be my favourite thing about you anymore . . . I like your mouth quite a bit, too."

He starts to shove me away in a flurry of embarrassment—but then he doesn't. Instead, he settles back down against me.

"Shizuka," he mumbles, but says nothing else and closes his eyes.

He is acknowledging that I am not _him_, and now I can close my own eyes and sleep, secure in the fact that in this one thing, I am only myself and I will have an entire lifetime of sharing my lover with no one, not even me.

* * *

I am woken by the feeling of something soft but heavy falling over my face. I had been sleeping extremely comfortably, with one leg thrown over his and my nose buried in his hair. I'm not sure when his warm presence disappeared, but I can't say I'm pleased to discover his absence while simultaneously being suffocated by a piece of fabric. I'm not even awake yet, and now all this?

"What?" I manage to grunt, trying to remember how my hands work so I can get this offending object off my face. I can only assume that he is still in the room and did this to me. "You? What?" is the best I can come up with, finally freeing myself of the heavy press of fabric.

"Put that on."

I was unaware that a night of perfect sex would leave one feeling so groggy—almost hungover—the next morning. I don't think I've ever slept so well, and I wasn't quite ready for that to be over. All he says is _Put that on_, obviously assuming I don't need anything else to orient myself back in reality. I struggle to sit up. After much rubbing of my eyes with the heels of my hands, I regain the ability to look at something and recognize it. The fabric he threw over me is a dressing robe, which apparently is being used in lieu of an alarm clock.

"There are better ways to wake me up," I mutter.

"So grumpy in the morning," he says, his teasing tone doing nothing to fix that.

"I'm nicer after coffee." A fact he already knows, I've slept at his shop plenty of times.

He is suddenly in front of me, then kneeling down, and then he's straddling my lap, with his knees pinning down the robe across my legs and effectively holding me in place. His kiss is long, deliberate, and full. My sluggish brain barely gets as far as _Whoa_ and by the time I'm ready to respond, he's already standing up again.

"Better?" he drawls.

Somehow, while he slept, he became awfully sure of himself. Not that I'm complaining, far from it. Who the hell needs coffee anyway?

"Much."

"Good. Now put that on."

The robe. Right. There is a reality beyond fantastic kissing.

"Do my parents want us or something?"

"I'm calling Syaoran."

He then proceeds directly to doing so, calling up a circle and blinding me with glowing light, and leaving me with the choice of scrambling to put the robe on or affording Syaoran the opportunity of seeing myself in all my glory. I opt for the robe. I'm aware that they're technically the same person, at least as I understand the situation, but the differences between them seem clear enough on this point.

A small portal opens, revealing a startled face. I see a man who used to be a boy I knew and still is trapped in that boy's decisions. His face is still youthful, but it is youthful in the way mine is—we are nearly the same age. It's not the unnaturally frozen state that has kept the person beside me from ever changing. He is definitely older, and his mature face is alight with joy that takes the years right back off.

"Watanuki!" he cries out, his voice deeper than my very old instincts expected. There's a scar down his forehead that divides his eyebrow in two, but doesn't seem to have touched his eye. I don't know if he had that before. "I can't believe you found a way to contact me!"

My Tsubasa gives him an encouraging smile, revealing his happiness at seeing this person again. "Syaoran, how are you?"

I suppose it would be strange if they were both calling one another Tsubasa, but since I can no longer think of him as "Watanuki," it makes "Syaoran" feel just as unfitting. But then, I think he actually enjoys being called Syaoran. It's what his princess calls him, after all.

"I'm fine," he says dismissively, "but let's talk about you sending Mokona away and _losing all contact with us_."

I had been aware of just how chilling Tsubasa can be when he's angry, but I was unaware that Syaoran could manage the same thing. His eyes, usually so warm, have become rather flinty.

"We couldn't travel to you anymore, we couldn't even _call_ you, I thought something had happened to you—"

"As you can see, I'm fine. I told Mokona that I just wanted him to be happy, instead of stuck in the shop with me. _Has_ he been happy?"

"Well enough," Syaoran says brusquely. "Other than worried sick about you, like the rest of us."

It is at this moment that the rest of them make their appearance. I can see that the door behind Syaoran is opening and not only the Mokonas are bouncing through, but the two men who have accompanied Syaoran on his journeys.

"Hyu!" the blond man says happily, rushing forward to join Syaoran at the opening of the portal. "Watanuki! How are you?"

"Hello, Fai," Tsubasa answers.

"Huh," Kurogane mutters, walking up behind them. "I thought it was just this idiot mage who didn't get older. It's a wizard thing, isn't it?"

The same does not hold true for Kurogane. The line that always appeared on his forehead when he scowled is now a permanent fixture, and there is a certain stiffness to the way he moves his arm that I suspect has become normal for him. He must be approaching forty, by now.

And I know that this acknowledgement of it has hurt Tsubasa. His unaging face is a sign of his choices, and a reminder of how bitterly he has come to regret them. For my part, I am comforted in knowing that he will age normally from now on, and I won't linger on his regrets. But I do move to stand closer to him, offering him my silent support. As always.

That's the moment that Kurogane meets my eyes and frowns deeply. Somehow, he has just figured me out. I have no idea what Tsubasa is planning to say to them, so I don't do anything. I just hold Kurogane's eyes for a moment, then turn my face to my companion.

"At least you had someone with you," Syaoran says, seeing me.

"You're not in your shop." Fai is the one who points it out. "Where are you?"

"My bedroom," I reply while Syaoran's eyes are frantically searching the scene behind us. I think Fai and Kurogane had both noticed the tableau we were presenting immediately, but it's only just dawning on Syaoran that I'm in a dressing robe, Tsubasa wearing little more, and the bed behind us is rumpled—it looks thoroughly debauched. I do believe that I'm feeling rather proud of myself, at the moment. And the minute he notices my satisfaction, he's probably going to punch me because there's something in his spirit that's still feisty and seventeen.

"Ack."

For a minute, this is the only thing that comes out of Syaoran's mouth. He's probably the only one on his side of the conversation who has not realized that I am me and not—well, me. Even the Mokonas . . . The upset looks they're wearing seem to be directed more at him than at me, actually. It makes sense. They were devoted to Yuuko first of all, and his actions must seem gravely disappointing to them. Especially when he sent Mokona away to isolate himself still further.

But that was then, and this is now. Perhaps we can say he was ill, and now he's well again. It's something like that, and it hardly matters to me what we call it. He's with me. That's all I care about.

"You left the shop," Syaoran finally says. "How . . .?"

"I've become that powerful," he answers softly. Then his face is as hopeful as I've ever seen it. "I think— I really think I can do it, Syaoran. I can send you home."

The expression on the man's face is truly something to behold. I'm glad I was woken up and allowed to be present for this, because there is no way to believe the universe is all bad when looking at Syaoran. He is completely speechless. And a hand falls on each of his shoulders, one slender and pale and the other sturdy and tanned. His two friends are there to support him, even though their own hearts must be struggling just to take it all in. Their journey is finally coming to an end.

"I— I can't— thank you. You can finally leave, and you could do anything, but you're doing this for me first, and . . . Thank you."

"I think we'll have to come to where you are," Tsubasa says, almost lightly, almost glibly. "I think it would be easiest to send you, if I were physically with you."

"I'm coming," I tell him, very much in spite of myself. I know it's unnecessary to say it, but there's still something in my soul that clenches tight with horror at knowing freedom to leave means freedom to leave me behind.

Thankfully, he seems to understand. There's even a flash of regret in his eyes because he knows why I needed to say it.

"Of course you are, did you think I was going to let you get away with being lazy and not helping?" he says, mock-scolding to get us away from such melancholy thoughts.

"Thank you, Doumeki," Syaoran blurts out. "For staying with him all this time."

I was wondering when we'd get to this moment, but I don't think I ought to be the one to say it. It should be Tsubasa, but I suddenly don't think he's going to. This is a joyous occasion, or has been so far, and this will change it. But Syaoran is the only one who doesn't seem to realize the truth.

It's Kurogane who breaks it to him.

"That's not Doumeki."

I know because I was told that these men came to visit the shop a couple of times, and that Kurogane and my great-grandfather, with hardly a word spoken between them, seemed to reach a perfect understanding available only to brothers-in-arms. It's no surprise to me that he knew.

"I could tell because I can see it," Fai murmurs, tapping his unnatural eyes. "How did you know?"

Syaoran is stiff with shock while Kurogane explains.

"He has a different posture. And he's standing too close to him."

"So who are you?" Syaoran blurts out.

"I'm his great-grandson."

"Almost true," Fai murmurs thoughtfully.

"_What?_" It's obviously not the sort of question that actually requires an answer, so we all keep silent while Syaoran's chilling anger takes over. "You— how long has it been?"

"Syaoran, don't—"

"How _long has it been_, Watanuki?"

"Since you last saw me?"

"Yes," he bites out.

"Nearly a hundred years."

"A— a hundred—" he stumbles over this concept, then shakes his head ferociously. "You fool," he spits out. Then he turns around and marches to the door we can see in the portal, walks out of it, and slams it behind him.

The white Mokona springs forward to follow him, but Fai catches her. "Not now," he says, and his own voice is very, very cold. He looks back through the portal. At me. There are tears in his eyes, anger or sorrow, I'm not sure which. I don't really know him. "You are a fool," he says, and for a minute I don't know who he's talking to. Then he marches out of sight, although he doesn't leave. He's still close enough to listen.

I look at Kurogane, who still remains there. "Do _you_ think I'm a fool?" I ask him.

"Doesn't matter what I think," he replies. "It was your decision to make."

He is the one who is capable of seeing this from my perspective, and I'm glad to have somebody who does. He knows. He knows it doesn't matter how it happens, it's only being at his side that matters. My Tsubasa has me, and I will be there to shield him from all the anger directed his way. It's nice that somebody might have my back while I'm doing that. Well . . . A look at Kurogane's face does not convince me that he is a particularly forgiving individual. _Maybe_ he'll have my back. Then again, it's not like I need it.

Syaoran, having thought the better of his temper, comes back in and slams the door just in time to hear me say, "That's right. It was my decision."

Hearing this coming from me at least gets them all back in front of the portal, although none of them look particularly happy. Mokona is weeping.

"If you're not Doumeki, why do you look just like him?" Syaoran asks, and his voice is trembling with the war for control.

"You can see it, can't you, Fai?" I ask the blond man, who nods a little. "His soul is in me. I'm . . . reborn. It gets confusing at times. I don't actually have his memories, but I've heard so many stories about him and have so many of his feelings in me that there isn't much difference sometimes. There's days when the word 'me' gets a little flexible. Although we've established just who's bed we're in." If I had lost sight of who I was at any point last night, I think I would have gone stark raving mad.

"What _is _your name, by the way?"

I can't help the fact that my smile is a little mocking, and a little sheepish. "I think my great-grandmother, his wife, knew this was going to happen. She must have told my mother about it before I was born, because she insisted on naming me Shizuka."

"Remind me that I'm going to give Kimiko _hell_ for that," Tsubasa mutters.

"Does that mean it wasn't like that for you and Doumeki?" Syaoran asks, looking both confused and angry now.

"No. He was married."

"I think it might be different each time," I add in. "I know you have met people who are bound together in different dimensions and they weren't all bound in the same way."

Fai puts on a teasing, pouting face at this. "I refuse to believe that there is _any_ version of me or ever will be that _doesn't_ want to take Kuro-pu and—"

He is unable to finish because there is a scarred, calloused hand clamped down over his mouth. It was a good effort, but Syaoran is not amused, and even the Mokonas are not taking this and running with it.

"How could you let it go on for so long?" Syaoran asks, his voice deceptively soft.

Tsubasa begins a halting explanation of what has happened in the past hundred years. But what is clear to me about him and his motivations does not seem entirely clear to him. He knows he sent great-grandfather away for the sake of the family, but he can't seem to explain his reasons for remaining in the shop, and for deciding to leave it with me. He is miserable, trying to come up with something to say and having to face how little he thinks of himself.

"Yuuko," the white Mokona weeps softly.

"You let her down," the black one adds.

"You let everyone down," Syaoran snaps.

"Especially Doumeki," Fai whispers, his hand clinging to the one that was so recently over his mouth.

I step in to his side and put my arm around him and draw him up tight against me. "It doesn't matter anymore. We've gone past that. The only thing I care about is where we are right now, and I won't let any of you say anything else about it to him."

Kurogane hadn't said anything anyway, and my words make Fai smile rather bitterly, so I know I won't have to worry about the two of them. But Syaoran _is_ my Tsubasa, in a way that is similarly strange to the way that I am Doumeki Shizuka, and he is capable of cutting him down in ways worse than anyone else. But he looks down at the way my hand grips my lover's waist, and the way he is leaning into me, hanging his head in shame and breathing unevenly, and something in the man's face softens at last.

"Okay," he says, even though nothing about this is really okay. "I would have waited a hundred years, too," he adds, almost too quietly to be heard. I think it's me he's coming to an understanding with me, more than with his own other self. But it's a first step. There will be time later for the rest of it. We are free now, after all. As free as we want to be, in any case, although there are some bonds that are very welcome and have led to a pleasantly warm and slender body pressed against me.

"She'll be glad you're moving forward," Mokona says, even though I was distracted and don't know which it was. I think it was speaking for both of them.

"Are you coming right now?" Syaoran asks, taking a step backward as though we're simply going to step through the portal.

"No," he says, still leaning into me. "We have to say goodbye to his family. And I want to make sure I haven't left any loose ends in the universe. We'll come in a few more hours." I wonder, briefly, if the differences in the passage of time will negate this and make it seem immediate to them. But Syaoran is nodding.

"We've been here for a while, too," he says, indicating the world they're currently inhabiting. "We ought to say goodbye to a few people."

"Fai," Tsubasa says suddenly. "I may need the assistance of your magic. Will the two of you come back to Clow with us? I think between us, we can manage to give them bodies again."

Kurogane suddenly grins. "You mean I'll finally be able to kick their asses?"

Fai looks up at him quite seriously, though. "I know how much you want to go home. Are you sure?"

"It's only going to be, what, a couple of days? I've only been back to visit a couple of times in fifteen years, you idiot. I can handle a couple more days. Let's give them time to get used to the idea of _you_ moving in."

I know it will cost him to wait, no matter what he says—even now, I can see the anticipation building in him—but he wants to see all this completed as much as any of us.

"We'll see you soon, then."

I know the conversation between them isn't entirely over, but the rest of it will go unsaid. There's no reason to be angry and accusing over something that's already over with, and any condemnation Syaoran might offer can be heaped right back on him, since he's the reason my Tsubasa exists to begin with. It would get them nowhere to argue. Instead, they'll move past it. They'll go on to the joy of returning Syaoran to _his_ Tsubasa—although I suppose we'll call her Sakura. I am most eager to meet the beautiful princess I have heard tales of these past hundred years. I know _my_ Tsubasa will be glad to see her in reality, outside of dreams. And the _other _Tsubasa . . . He's shaking. I can see his hands shaking, even through the portal.

"Okay. Wait for us, and we'll be there."

"Where are you going, after that?" Syaoran blurts out.

We both shrug. The portal closes on those beloved faces, and then it's just the two of us again. He steps more fully into my embrace, and accepts a kiss of reassurance. I don't need to tell him anything, and he doesn't need to say anything to me. Last night was answer enough to the regrets and need for forgiveness. We are free from those, too.

"I don't think I mind," he says, sounding surprised. "That I don't know where we'll go."

I certainly don't mind. I like the way that all these universes are spreading out around us so invitingly. Freedom is almost as beautiful as this one thing that still chains me.


End file.
